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South African glossy causes a stir after featuring a fake cover of the Duchess of Cambridge on the August issue The Duchess of Cambridge is one of the most sought after cover stars in the world, with a horde offashion editors vying for her to feature on one of their issues.

But the trendsetting royal has so far turned down all offers of a glossy magazine photoshoot,– including one by fashion bible Vogue, so it came as quite a surprise to see Kate gracing the August issue of Marie Claire South Africa.

In order to create their dream cover with the Duchess, editors at the South African magazine did the next best thing they could do and photoshopped Kate’s head and hands on the body of another model. The cover headline reads: “Fashion’s New Royal Icon Wears SA’s Best Local Designs” but fully acknowledges the ‘fan-art’ aspect with a disclaimer at the bottom: “Of course she doesn't. But she should.” On the cover Kate wears a gown created by local designer, Clive Rundle and inside the mag…

Google and Apple may still be at each others' throats -- remember Steve Jobs' threat to "go thermonuclear war" on the company he felt ripped off the iPhone -- but you wouldn't know it from the way Google was talking on Thursday. At its I/O conference for developers, Google (GOOG, Fortune 500) announced that its Chrome browser will be available in iTunes App Store later on Thursday, as will Google Drive, the productivity app suite that includes Google Docs. The news drew cheers and applause from an excited crowd of software writers."People have been asking us for this for a long time, but we wanted to make sure we got it right," Sundar Pichai, Google's head of Chrome, said during his keynote presentation. Chrome is now the most popular browser in the world by some metrics, including Google's own. It has 310 million active users, and a growing number of them are mobile. Google's Android mobile operating system began using Chrome as its primary …

On Monday afternoon, something called Kidz Bopwas trending on Twitter. I had never heard of it, but was instantly amused by the word "Bop."You see, when I was a kid, Nana lived with us at home in Arizona and she used to wield a giant cardboard wrapping paper roll that we affectionately called her Bopper. When our Great Dane, Shane, would annoy her, she'd promptly try to beat the crap out of him. And he loved it. But Kidz Bop appeared to be far less amusing than Nana's cardboard bludgeoning stick. As one Twitterererer put it: "Kidz Bop can go die in a hole." Whatever this Kidz Bop was people weren't happy, and I quickly pieced together from the cascade of angry tweets that it was a compilation children's music series that had just aired a rather annoying commercial on Nickelodeon for its new upcoming release, "Kidz Bop 22." Which suggests, perhaps, that somewhere in America there's a parent who owns the other 21 disks and is slowly being t…

Forget the applications like video and audio streaming, or the built-in speakers. The most noteworthy feature of Google's new Nexus Q device may be this: It's made in the United States. When Google rolled out the device at its developers conference in San Jose, California, on Wednesday, reporters noticed the words "Designed and Manufactured in the U.S.A." etched onto the bottom. The gadget, about the size and shape of a Magic 8 Ball, is billed by Google as "the first social streaming player." It can be connected to a TV, has its own speakers, and can stream music and video from the cloud as well as connect an Android tablet or phone with home electronics. Google hasn't played up its origin, even though the vast majority of electronics are manufactured in China or other countries where labor is cheaper than in the U.S. A Google spokeswoman did not immediately reply to a message seeking comment for this story. But The New York Times reported Thursday that it…

"Uh-oh, I smell smoke again, hang on ..." Robbie Trencheny, a 20-year-old programmer based in Colorado Springs, Colorado, walked away from our Skype video call to look at the billowing clouds of smoke outside. When he returned: "Yeah, it really smells like a bonfire out here now," he said. As of Wednesday afternoon, the Waldo Canyon wildfire has burnedmore than 15,000 acres in the mountains just outside Colorado Springs. It's moving fast and doubled in size overnight. Several neighborhoods in the western part of the city, and part of the Air Force Academy, have been evacuated, and homes have been destroyed. Trencheny lives about five miles east of the blaze. An avid Twitter user, he saw the flood of discussion about the fire there, and he decided to help make it easier to follow the action. Monster fire terrorizes a Colorado city Colorado fire 'smacks you in the face' Colorado residents evacuate before fire Evacuee: 'Don't know how to start over'

Summer is a time when people ritualistically hit the gym to trim down for swimsuit season, working out to look good in a bathing suit. But this time three years ago, all Kit Ooraikul wanted was to be able to move again. He was struck with Guillain-Barre Syndrome (GBS), a disorder in which the body's immune system mistakenly attacks the nervous system. He spent months lying in a hospital bed, watching his muscles deteriorate. Finally, his health started to improve enough for him to go into rehabilitation. In rehab, he started running. It was his way of building back the muscle he'd lost. But after he was discharged, he needed something to keep him moving. That's when he turned to RunKeeper, a fitness application that tracks, maps and records the progress of its users' running activity. "I couldn't see myself just running on my own without some motivation tool," the 37-year-old said. Ooraikul is one of many people using fitness apps and sites to get in shape. M…

Is this the end of the road for Research in Motion and the once-loved "CrackBerry"? RIM (RIMM) reported three pieces of awful news Thursday: 5,000 layoffs, a giant quarterly loss and -- worst of all -- another delay to its next BlackBerry system. Shares plunged 18% Friday on the news.

The company's BlackBerry 10 operating system -- meant to be the linchpin of RIM's turnaround -- won't hit the market until the first quarter of 2013. The news is so concerning that some critics don't think the company will even survive long enough to launch the OS. BlackBerry 10 (which RIM first announced in October as "BBX" before a lawsuit over the system's name) had previously been slated for release later this year. CEO Thorsten Heins was somber on a post-earnings conference call Thursday, saying that developers have been making progress on BlackBerry 10 but implementation is "more challenging than anticipated." Related story: RIM: What the hell happened? C…

It's not engagement or the lack of a clear way to monetize itself. It's not those sometimes-unwieldy friend-organizing circles, or even the perception that no one other than nerds uses the service. The problem, its creators believe, is that many people keep comparing it to Facebook -- or, more broadly, social networks. While social interaction is a key part of Google+, the project is much more ambitious. Google+ is nothing short of a wholesale upgrade to all of Google's products and services, but with the identity of the user incorporated. Mashable sat down with Vic Gundotra, Google's senior vice president of social business, and Bradley Horowitz, Google+'s vice president of product, at the Google I/O developer conference. They were excited about the new Google+ features that were announced -- the Events feature and the new tablet app -- but they were also quick to downplay any comparisons to Facebook, or any suggestionthat many people aren't interested in joinin…